Written by Elisabeth Fetter.
After last years successful event in Bayreuth the 33rd Annual Meeting of the German Society for Crystallography was hosted by Claus Rüscher, Yaşar Krysiak, Armin Feldhoff, Jesko Köhnke and Hilke Petersen in the capital of lower Saxony: Hannover! The conference took place in the stunning “Welfenschloss”, which used to be the royal residence of the last king of Hanover and is now the main building of the Leibniz University Hanover.
The conference started with greeting words of the organising committee and a moment of silence for Prof. Ekhard Salje whose loss shook the whole crystallographic community. He will be missed dearly by everybody. Instead of Prof. Salje, Prof. Sandro Jahn was able to step in for the first plenary lecture with a talk about material properties of the deep earth. After a short break with refreshments and beverages the first four microsymposia gave exciting insights into functional materials, electron diffraction, solid state compounds and the teaching methods of crystallography. Followed by the honour evening and the welcome reception the first day of the conference was already filled with lots of new impressions as well as lots of talks to new and old acquaintances.
The second day of the conference started early for the motivated members of the working groups 6 to 9, as their meetings started at 8 o’clock in the morning. Nevertheless, the tiredness of the morning was quickly forgotten as new members of the working groups were welcomed (and a lot of coffee was drunk). With two outstanding plenary talks from Prof. Kriven about high temperature analysis of ceramics and Prof. Hadermann about challenges of in situ 3D ED with 4D STEM and 8 different microsymposia the morning and noon the time flew by quickly. Thankfully, Bruker AXS GmbH provided lunch bags during the industrial symposium and everybody could continue visiting their favourite talks content and with a full belly. Finally, the well attended poster session started and the given two hours were intensely used for scientific talks. If the DGK general assembly wouldn’t have been scheduled directly afterwards rumours say people would be continuing with the poster session. Additionally, the Young Crystallographers had their own meeting and voted for Anushka Gosh, Ben Ebel and Florian Meurer as their new chairs. Many thanks to the three committed members for taking over those important positions! Florian directly performed his duty by shaking the hands of Julian Zuber, Lukas Sippach and Julia L. Kowal who had won the STOE poster prizes for their outstanding posters.
After a lot of voting, decision making and prize awarding the young crystallographers finally had time to socialize with a late-night snack and some cocktails in the Santana Bar. As all Hanoverian chemistry students spend a significant amount of time in the Santana Bar during their studies, it was natural that the young crystallographers felt right at home and had a splendid night there.
Despite all the late-night activities the next day started with a second round of working group meetings (2 to 5), plenary talks and microsymposia. This time the audience was charmed by Prof. Goodwin with his talk about Truchet-tile architectures in materials chemistry and by Prof. Span with the talk about mechanisms of [FeFe] Hydrogenase for biotechnology. The industrial symposium was held by DECTRIS Ltd. and again 8 great microsymposia were available, making it hard for the audience to restrict themselves to a fraction of them. One great asset of this years DGK conference was that two of 20 microsymposia were dedicated to aspiring young scientists! One offered 18 young crystallographers the possibility to present their science in a 5-minute talk in addition to a poster. The other was held by the winners of the Lieselotte-Templeton Award and Lukas Brüning, Daniel Brüx, Niklas Langer! The guys convinced the jury of their work.
Another event that earns the description of extraordinary was the following display of Aikido by Prof. Renz who enchanted everybody by throwing two of his colleagues through the main hall of Leibniz University and by spilling the secrets of the ancient Japanese warriors Shogūn. The final poster-session was again filled with lively discussions which were continued on the way to “Meyer’s Lebenslust”, a restaurant famous for its German home-style food. Needless to say, that the scientific discussions didn’t cease the whole night (as well as the private discussions) and only a handful people are known to the author which returned home before midnight.
On the final day the local public transport tried to keep everybody from the conference by going on strike. Those who despite the circumstances arrived in the Welfenschloss were rewarded with the inspiring talk from Prof. Richert about organic crystallisation chaperones and the last four microsymposia. With the closing words from the organising committee the conference sadly had to end, but the baton of the relay race called DGK was already given to Prof. Redecke in Lübeck, leaving everybody in the anticipation to meet soon again.